A New Years resolution

I've realised that I can be a bit of a Luddite at times. I've been thinking about the amount of "new" communications technologies I use, and it's actually fairly poor. I (like a lot of people) have huge inertia in adopting cool new stuff.

Sure, I have this blog, but that's more because I like writing and it's of direct commercial benefit to my business. I don't have a personal blog, apart from my issue-specific (and very occasional) environmental one. And I'll use SkypeOut on a PC to make long international calls (but over WiFi, usually, so I get points for that....)

But I don't use Twitter, I use IM maybe twice a month, rarely update my FaceBook page apart from my status, I send MMS's once a month, eschew all forms of video communication and collaboration technology and so on. I've recently received some invitations to yet another social network (Spock) and winced.

Even my two main mobile phones are more than 18 months old. And although one is a smartphone, I never download applications to it.

So as a New Year's Resolution, I'm going to consciously become a bit geekier. I'll probably get a quarantined plain-vanilla Symbian or Windows phones that I can install software on, and wipe clean or reflash when I need to do. Time permitting, I'll try and play around with the latest gee-whiz social or business communication tool. I'll upgrade my normal phones and probably get one of 3's new prepay USB HSDPA modems as well. And I'll look out for interesting things like mobile voice mashups to play with.

I might even tart up this blog & the main Disruptive Analysis site, with some of the latest, trendiest blogging furniture & widgets. (But not that awful link-prevew window thing which I detest).

I'll give it 3 months initially... which coincidentally takes me up to Lee Dryburgh's ultracool eComm 2008 conference, more on which to follow in another post. Hopefully it'll mean that (a) I'll retain some vague credibility among people I meet at the event, and (b) I won't be wandering around like a total cynic saying 'are real people honestly going to use that when they could just use SMS?"

Now, I just have to find some new friends who actually care about any of this stuff to talk to....